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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22656637">No Shield</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil'>Island_of_Reil</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood and Injury, Character Death, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, M/M, Mentor/Protégé</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 14:49:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,078</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22656637</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Now, where my hand touched his skin, it slid like marble slickened. My chest was pressed to his, heaving. Yet, just as his own could not for Prince Rolande, mine could not serve him as a shield.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alcuin nó Delaunay/Anafiel Delaunay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Chocolate Box - Round 5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>No Shield</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eratoschild/gifts">Eratoschild</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Chocolate Box, Eratoschild.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So oft I’d thought that Delaunay was the blood in my veins, the breath in my lungs, the pulse of my heart.</p><p>Fitting it was, then, that as the granite-like sparkle dimmed in his eyes, the fresh rent in my side drained me of the first, hindered me from the second, and in the end would silence the third.</p><p>I thought back to the night I cheated death, the terrified mare bucking and plunging beneath me as I dripped blood onto the stones of the courtyard. Striking his hand away, welcoming the flash of fury that, for a bare moment, burnt away pain and terror and, worst of all, remorse: <i>This wouldn’t have happened if you had taught me to use a blade!</i>
</p><p>And mayhap it would not have happened.  Delaunay and I had fought back to back in the library but for the trembling servants between us, striving in vain to shield them from the assailants’ swords. Rage had lit me from within, lent me unearthly swiftness and clarity of mind. My soul had sung with a dark joy that shocked me when my blade pierced the first armsman and then the second to the heart.</p><p>But Guy had been a Cassiline, and it had taken just four men to cut him down. How could one greying poet with his soldiering days long behind him, one soft youth trained far better for the bedchamber than the battlefield, and a half-dozen panicked household servants who had never held a blade before have kept twenty grinning murderers at bay?</p><p>Now, where my hand touched his skin, it slid like marble slickened. My chest was pressed to his, heaving. Yet, just as his own could not for Prince Rolande, mine could not serve him as a shield.</p><p>“…Alcuin.”</p><p>My name was not even a whisper, barely the eerie rasp of the quick-dead creature the Skaldi call <i>draugr</i>. In the faint ray of torchlight that had filtered through the curtains of the library, Delaunay’s lips shone darkly, dripped heavily. He had not had Phèdre and me trained in the physician’s arts, but I had heard him trade tales enough of battle with the Comtes de Somerville and Fourcay. The mortally wounded choked on their own blood before they died.</p><p>“Al...cuin,” he managed again, the syllables uttered no more distinctly than before but with far greater urgency. I cupped his head in my hands, mindful that I had clutched my own wound moments before. A small, unthinking part of me protested: <i>I am ruining his fine toilette.</i></p><p>He had trained me too well.</p><p>“...’na...fiel,” I gasped. The sword-thrust had not pierced my lungs, I did not think, but it had likely sheared through muscle with which I breathed. Just the drawing of my breath raked fire throughout my breast. To speak hurt even more. </p><p>“Alc....” He could not form my name a third time. Mayhap he’d decided mid-word that the breath left to him was better spent. “Jos…c’l’n….” He slurred the final syllable like a drunkard, and he wheezed for air. “Phè...”</p><p>A long pause. His breath raled throughout it with a wet and squelching note. I thought of foul and stagnant water, of rotting wood one does not lift for revulsion of what might crawl out from beneath. I thought of Vitale Bouverre.</p><p>When I gleaned that Delaunay had fallen silent apurpose, I drew my own tortuous breath again.</p><p>“...not...”</p><p>My own eternal pause, made of white agony and thick, metallic blood welling in my mouth that did not at all quench my rapidly mounting thirst. And, finally: “…here.”</p><p>He shook his head, his once-fine mouth twisting in frustration. He coughed, wetly, and began again. </p><p>“Will...” </p><p>His eyes were grave, supplicating. My lord, who had never begged for aught.</p><p>“...come.”</p><p>A kind and pointless lie, that as I lay on his breast I might hope for our salvation until the world was snuffed out around me. Mayhap the mercy was for him alone, though he would not have admitted it, may not have even realized it. That he would go to the Terre D’Ange beyond all mortal perception thinking I still had that much innocence to lose.</p><p>I knew in my slowing heart, as well as I knew that I loved him, that it was very likely true.</p><p>I leaned forward, panting, beginning to tremble with cold, but I did not speak. I would never utter another word to him again. Instead I pressed my cracked lips to his forehead, with its fine lines of worry and its salty slick of sweat.</p><p>“Al......cuin.” </p><p>I waited long, long hours that were only seconds, my mouth as sere as Khebbel-im-Akkad, my limbs growing Gotland-cold, the floor beneath us a slough of blood. I had ceased to expect another word, another syllable, when I heard the skeletal exhalation:</p><p>“....love...”</p><p>And then mine was the only breath that labored in the still of our death-chamber.</p><p>I could have multiplied my torment, told myself that this, not the false assurance of rescue, was his final deception. That his heart was never mine to hold, for it had long lain dead in an icy Camaeline defile; that never could I be the object of his devotion, only the device with which to prove it.</p><p>I had not the strength to think on it. And, in truth, it did not seem to matter any longer.</p><p>Wet hand shaking, I drew each lid with its long, fine lashes down in turn over an eye that no longer glinted with topaz and cunning and desire. In death, his beloved face was Eisheth-serene. I kissed each shuttered soul-window, the crest of each finely wrought cheekbone, his slick and fast-cooling lips, though in doing so I speckled him with the blood from my own. And with each kiss I prayed. To Shemhazai, whom I had venerated all these years under Delaunay’s exacting eye; to Naamah, whom I had grossly blasphemed just to win my lord’s regard; to Camael and Cassiel, who had lent me a soldier’s strength, if not a god’s, in my time of need; to Blessed Elua himself.</p><p>
  <i>Dear my lord, I know how you long to run to him. All I ask — I, who have never done aught that was not for you — is that you keep your promise to him one last time: wait for me, take my hand, and hold to it tightly as we pass through the terrors of the dark gate.</i>
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